We’ve all heard of the six degrees of separation.
You know – I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who is famous. Sometimes it only two or three degrees, but whatever the outcome, it usually ends up with a famous person or, at least, a person you both know.
I can’t lay claim to knowing too many famous people, although I do know a prominent actor’s aunt, I went to school with a singer of note and my son went to school with Guyton Grantley who is a little bit famous (House Husbands, Underbelly). But overall, the separation is more about getting to the point of knowing someone in common.
In fact, I expect it. Perhaps I move in very small circles and know all the fish that swim in that particular pond. But usually, I can find that link pretty quickly with most people I meet. Of course, the odds are stacked in my favour, particularly if the person in question comes from Brisbane/Redlands, went to my school, plays a musical instrument and/or has children of a similar age to mine.
Maybe I’ve been swimming in the pond for too long. Because on a recent travelling holiday down south, I experienced something new. And that is that I met lots of people who may not know someone I know but who look like people I know.
So how does that work in the separation stakes? I guess it a one degree of separation on a tangent: ie I know someone who looks like you.
It certainly gives you that same spooky feeling, that deja vu moment that speaks of being exactly where you should be.
It seems that the southern part of our continent is home to doppelgangers from the north. I mean there has to be only so many permutations of body parts to go around, so it makes perfect sense that somewhere there may be someone with the same configuration of mouth/nose/eyes that I have or that one of my friends has. Either way, it makes conversation strange, aka not talking with familiarity about familiar things to a look-alike, but who is disturbingly nevertheless a stranger.
I guess the next stage is for the person who looks like someone to know someone who knows someone famous who looks like someone they know.
- Linda Muller